As the building stage of the new Si lab chamber draws to a close, there is a final step - bakeout (info) - build an oven around your system and cook it for a few days. This process removes any water or pesky hydrocarbons inside the chamber.
As with anything in experimental physics, there are 2 ways of achieving bakeout: the expensive (or 'Graphene Centre') way, or the funny way.
And this is the most flattering angle.
An inner circle of six silicon atoms and an outer circle of 12 silicon atoms forming a lovely "Atomic Rose". Image taken by scanning tunnelling microscope at Bath by Duncan Lock.
Congratulations of Sarah and Rebecca, both graduating from the MPhy course. It was a pleasure to have you in the lab. Will you be back?
Recommended listening for this post: Sometimes, life can feel like you're stuck in the part of the training montage where nothing is going right. No matter how much you "wax on, wax off", the finish on Mr. Miyagi's car...
After the first bake the pressure was too high. So more drilling to get rid of virtual leaks. After the second bake Duncan found a tiny (4e-9) leak in an old gate-valve. Only £2k to replace, and many thanks Scanwel for super-fast delivery (http://www.scanwel.co.uk/ ). Now the pressures are all middle -10 torr. Not great, but at least we can now test the microscope and new Nanonis control system.